


Potential First Kisses

by Kaenith



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, POV First Person, or kisses plural actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10071095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaenith/pseuds/Kaenith
Summary: A few different versions of their first kiss.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a cross-posting of an old fic from my Tumblr: http://hauntinghyrule.tumblr.com/post/146872614323

**The time their first kiss is “goodbye”**

(Shadow)

Sharp glass digs into my back.  I must have landed on the shards of the broken mirror when I fell.

Dimly, I’m aware of voices, though I can’t make out what they’re saying.  They’re shouting, coming closer.

“—adow!   _Shadow!_ ”

They’re calling for _me_.  The realization makes me feel… something.  I’m too tired and the emotion is too complex; I let it drift past unexamined.

My focus is jolted back to the present by a hand on my brow, brushing my bangs back from my face.  A blur of purple leans over me, then coalesces into Vio after I blink a few times.  Of course it’s Vio.

Green kneels just behind Vio’s shoulder, Blue and Red stand further back.

Vio is speaking to me. “Shadow!  Why did you break the Dark Mirror?”

“Is Vaati gone?” I ask, ignoring his question and answering it at the same time.

“Yes.”  Vio’s free hand reaches for mine and entwines our fingers. I can feel him shaking, so slightly no one would ever be able to see it.  “Yes, thanks to you.”

This is confusing. “Me?”

“You saved us.”

“Oh.”  My eyelids are heavy.  The light burns at my face and hands.

“Hey, hang in there!” Vio squeezes my hand, as though he could keep me in this realm by force of grip and will alone.  It’s a nice thought.  I wish it were true.

But it isn’t, and there are things I need to say before I go.

“A shadow usually only follows,” I begin.  “It never gets to lead the way.  But today, I turned and chose my own path.”  I have to pause for breath.  Since when was talking so _exhausting?_  “I faced the enemy on my own.  It felt pretty good.  But… it doesn’t make me one of you.”

“Of course it does,” Green says.  “You’re one of us.  You’re our _friend_.”

The way he says it, with such conviction, I can almost believe him.

The sunlight is fire under my skin, and I can’t feel my hands and feet anymore.  There isn’t much time left, now.

There’s movement above me, and I think my vision has started to swim.  Then I realize that no, Vio really is leaning toward me.  That’s all I have time to realize before he presses his lips to mine.

My breath catches.

I don’t have much energy left, but I use what I have to kiss him back.  His skin seems almost cool, compared to the burning heat of sunlight—a moment of reprieve, before the end.

As I am torn from that world, the last thing I feel is Vio’s breath on my face and his hand in mine. The last thing I see is the four of them, gathered around me.

My vision whites out, and I fall back into darkness.

**-**

**The time their first kiss is “welcome back”**

(Vio)

The last rays of sunset still glow golden on the tallest spires of the castle, but the deep blue of nightfall pools in the courtyard where we stand.  There are eleven of us in all: Princess Zelda and I, facing each other in the center of the courtyard, Red, Green, and Blue, standing to either side of me, and the Six Maidens, arrayed in a circle around us.

“You’re sure the rest of us can’t go?” Green asks the Princess.  He glances at me.  “I don’t like sending one of my team alone into unknown territory.”

“I’m sure,” says Zelda, with more patience than I feel Green deserves, considering the number of times we’ve already had this conversation.  “The calculations involved in this are extremely delicate and finicky. We’ve been working on this ritual for a year, and it’s calibrated to transfer one person there and two back—adding any more would destabilize everything.”

Green crosses his arms sullenly, but he does not argue further.

Princess Zelda unties a small drawstring bag from her belt and hands it to me.  I loosen the drawstring and upend the bag over my open palm, letting a small shard of broken black glass tumble out into my hand.  A piece of the Dark Mirror.  The Princess takes my hand in both of hers, covering the piece of glass.

“As long as you’re touching the glass,” she says, “you will be able to return.”

I nod.  Satisfied that I know what to do, Princess Zelda and the Six Maidens begin to speak in unison, saying a prayer to the Goddesses.

Golden light starts to glow from between our joined hands, quickly becoming so bright I’m forced to squeeze my eyes shut.

I know at once when the spell has worked, because everything goes silent.  Not just the chanting—the courtyard had been full of the small sounds of evening crickets and birds, unremarkable until their sudden absence.

I open my eyes and find myself standing in a forest at night, and I feel a pang of bittersweet déjà vu.  It isn’t the same forest—the underbrush is thinner here, the trees a different kind—but it brings back memories.

The mirror shard in my hand gleams.  When I uncurl my fingers, it rises to float just above my hand, rotating slowly like a compass needle to point in the same direction no matter how I turn.  I nod to myself, pleased to see that the locator portion of our spell is working, and set off in the direction the shard indicates.

As my eyes adjust to the darkness, the details of my surroundings come into focus.  I watch the trees with particular interest. Their branches gnarl and twist into sharp angles, and I cannot identify their species.  Were my mission any less important, I would be sorely tempted to stop and examine them.

The sound of a twig snapping overhead startles me out of my thoughts.  I jerk my head up and see a humanoid silhouette perched in the branches above.

With weightless grace, the figured drops from the tree and lands facing me.  Even in the dim light of the forest, I can see well enough to recognize him.  His purple hair is even messier than I remember it, and his red eyes are wide with shock.  His long black hat drifts behind him like a wisp of smoke.

“Shadow!” I say, and then find myself stuck.  All the words I’ve been longing to say to him collide with each other and I don’t know where to begin.

He doesn’t speak either, nor does he approach me.  He eyes me warily, with his ears folded back in suspicion.  My spirits fall, a cold weight in my chest.  I have to fight to keep my own ears from drooping.  How can I blame him for not trusting me, after what I—

“Which of us won our chess match, the night after you faced Red and Blue at the Temple of Darkness?” he asks.

“I— wha—?” but I realize what he is trying to do before I can form the words: he fears I am an imposter.

“That’s a trick question,” I say, feeling the beginnings of a smile returning to my face.  “We never finished that game.  You got bored and had your pawns stage a revolt.”

I’ve barely finished speaking when he crosses the distance between us in two bounding steps and throws his arms around me.  The collision is forceful enough to almost send both of us toppling to the ground. I stumble back a step before regaining my balance and returning the hug.

Shadow tucks his face into the crook of my neck and shoulder, holding on like he never intends to let go. He is warm in my arms, real and solid and _alive_.   I feel like I can finally let myself believe that I’m not about to wake up and find this has all been a dream.

He leans back from the hug, just a bit.  Just enough to kiss me firmly on the lips.

He pulls away again immediately, before I have time to react.  The look on his face says that the kiss startled _him_ at least as much as it startled me.  He opens his mouth as if to speak, makes a few unintelligible sounds, then closes his mouth without managing any words.  A tinge of red starts to creep across his cheeks.

I make a decision, or perhaps I only realize the implications of one I already made long ago. I lean toward him, slowly, watching his eyes to gauge his reaction. He leans toward me.

Our noses bump.  It surprises a laugh out of me, which I try to suppress.  But then he starts snickering, and as if that were the cue to open the floodgates, every emotion I’ve been bottling up for the past year comes spilling out at once.  I’m laughing and crying at the same time, shaking with the force of it.  He’s crying, too, or maybe those are my tears on his cheeks.  Our faces are too close to be sure, our foreheads pressed together.  We’re still clinging to each other, partially from necessity now—I’m not confident I could remain standing if I were to let go.

After several minutes, I think I’ve regained my composure.  Then he hiccups—a startled, squeaky sound—and I’ve lost it once more.

When the giggling has finally subsided enough to allow for it, we kiss again, properly this time.  I let my eyes drift closed.  His lips are slightly chapped, and I can feel him smiling.

By the time we finally pull away, we are breathing in unison.

Eventually, I unwind one arm from behind his back and offer, palm-up, the hand still holding the Dark Mirror shard.

“C’mon,” I say.  “Our friends are waiting for us back home.”

-

**The times their first kiss is slowly, quietly, inevitable**

It happens after two weeks of living under the same roof, or it happens after two years of friendship and growing affection.

It happens in a burst of exuberance after the two of them beat Blue and Green in a team sparring match.

Or it happens after Shadow asks Red for relationship advice and accidentally sets off a chain-reaction of hilarious misunderstandings.

Or it happens on a quiet afternoon in the library, with rain tapping against the window, when Vio looks at Shadow beside him and realizes he’s in love.

It happens in a million different ways in a million different universes.  And really, that’s the beauty of it.


End file.
